Nature and role of Jesus

The Arian Controversy

Attempts to prove that Jesus is NOT God

1. God is a transcendent being

2. However, Jesus had a beginning and an end, therefore he cannot be transcendent

3. Therefore, Jesus cannot be God, but only a man

Contradictions:

Nicene creed, 'begoteen not made' or 'God from God, light from light, True God from True God'

The Chalcedonian Creed

Maintains that Jesus had two specific natures (divine and human)

Not a mixture of the two as some early thinkers imagined

Contradiction to Arian controversy, possibly a solution?

Does this contradict ideas within the trinity?

The Athasion Creed

This was a widely accepted doctrine

It explicitly states the equality of the Father, the son and the holy spirit in the trinity (Augustine)

• We are saved because God became human and died a human death
• God became human to make humans divine
• no mere creature could do this only the Word of God, therefore Christ must be God

Martin Luther and the reformation of the Church

- through Christ's righteousness humanity is saved

Humanity is united with Christ through faith, and although humanity is stained by sin God has great love and respect for them. 

Christ dies to pay legal penalty for the sins of humanity (relate to Jesus' sacrificial love), we can only know God through Christ, humanity can only knoe God through revelation, and philisophical speculation is futlie

Luther believed strongly in premeditation; he suggests that humans may think we have free will but we are wrong, everything, including choice is God's doing. Their sinful nature left them unable to fufill God's commands

John Calvin; the doctrine of sin

The sin of Adam plunged all humanity into depravity. Sin is the direction and implication of human nature - we are of Adam's seminal line (Augustine's theodicy of evil). Freedom of sin came from Jesus Christ

The Person of Christ                                                                                                      Christ was the mediator who speaks on God's behalf to humanity. Humanity could only know God through Christ. God is righteous and just and he must punish us for sin, but he is also all loving (Augustine). Christ is the prophet, King and priest.

The Nature of God                                                                                                            The bible was the utterance of God, all knowledge comes from him and so 'philisophical thinking' is pointless. Humanity has a natural awareness of God through our thinking, there are three ways in God is manifested: course of human history and events, the natural world and human consciousness

Calvin and the doctrine of atonement

The supreme example of God meeting, sinful humanity. There were five aspects to the doctrine:

• God wanted to rescue humanity and he did so by becoming human
• Gods atonement is aloving act
• Christ's, death life and ministry
• Christ triumphed over the forces of evil 
• Believers participate in his redeeming work

Jurgen Moltmann on God's impassibility

God is not impassible

Influenced by history of dogma, rediscovery of Luther, and protest atheism

The Crucified God 

- A God who cannot suffer is defficient, not all perfect

- Both Christ and the Father suffered but in different ways

- Christ suffered on the cross, and God in his loss of his son. 

Does this contradict the trinity, where all actions are commited by all persons of the trinity?

Weinandy on God's impassibility

God does not suffer

- For God to be morally impassible he must also be ontollogically impassible

- Jesus suffering is a lack of good, his earthly well-being, but God cannot lack good as he is all perfect

- If the Father suffered alongside his son as God, then it would eradicate the point of Jesus' suffereing and safcrifice to reconcile humans with God again. The idea is that Jesus' sacrifice was offered from a man to God, not from God to God